The Wall

Young Rob learns about the Berlin Wall.

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Hi. I'm Rob. Tale number thirty-three. The wall. In episode eight of the podcast, which is called Lost in a Dream, I talk about kind of a weird experience I had in first grade. And that led to someone reaching out to me who had been in third grade with me to remind me about something weird that had happened then. So in third grade, we had this teacher. I'm going to call her Miss House. She was not like my main teacher. My main teacher was Miss Thomas, but she was another teacher in the third grade. Um, and Miss House was born in America, and then she moved to Germany for like 10 years because her husband was in the military, and then she had recently moved back to America, and she was a third grade teacher at my school. And she had this knowledge of Germany, so once a week, all the kids in the third grade at the school that I went to would have a class taught by Miss House about Germany. And this was like a really important time in German history because the Berlin Wall was still up. And so a lot of what Miss House taught us about was the Berlin Wall and like the difference between East and West Germany. And it was pretty crazy to learn about. I was so young and didn't know anything about it. And like each week we would learn something new about East and West Germany. We even watched this movie one time called Night Crossing, which was about some people trying to escape from East Germany to West Germany by flying a homemade hot air balloon over the wall. And I remember the idea of the wall really affecting me. I was really concerned for the people in East Germany. And then one day in class, like my regular class, there was this emergency announcement that we all needed to go to Miss House's classroom immediately. And so all these kids from four third grade classes went to Miss House's class, and like all the desks and chairs were moved off to the side because there weren't enough for everyone. So we all sat on the floor, and then someone came rolling a TV in like really fast and nervously, and they set it up and they turned on the TV, and it was the news. And the Berlin Wall was coming down, and we sat there and we watched the news coverage. It was November 9th, 1989. And all of us were just like really moved by this, as the world was. But we were in third grade in, you know, an elementary school in Virginia, and I just can't imagine there were that many third grade classrooms in America that were affected as much as ours was. And, you know, as I went through life, I occasionally thought about this, like especially if I saw something on TV about the Berlin Wall or something like that, and how grateful I was for the experience, um, because I was young enough to where it could have been a thing that happened that I just didn't understand or even know anything about. But because we'd had this context and because how the timing played out that it happened while we were at school, so we were able to experience it as, you know, a class, the timing was incredible. A little too incredible, actually. Um I mentioned the date the wall came down, November 9th, 1989. And at some point in my adulthood, I was watching something, and that date was mentioned, the day the Berlin Wall came down. It made me think back about my third grade class, and then it occurred to me that I was not in third grade in 1989. I was in third grade in 1990, and so I was very confused because I have these vivid memories of seeing the wall come down on the news, but the timing wasn't right. And so I reached out to somebody that was in third grade with me and um asked them about it, and they remembered Mrs. House's class, and they remembered the whole thing. And then I said, you know, look at the date, and they were like, Yeah, that's really weird. And I had contacted this particular person because his mom was also a teacher in our elementary school, so he talked to her about it. And in 1989, the year the wall actually came down, the year before I was in third grade and had this experience. Miss House had been teaching her classes on Germany to all the third graders in my school, and when the wall came down, they did gather everyone and watch some of it live, and it was so successful that the next year they decided to recreate it. They picked a day in November 1990 that would be the day the wall came down, and then they played us a videotape of the news footage from that day. Since they knew the event was coming, this time they would do things a little differently. They would really focus on East and West Germany in the classes with Miss House leading up to it. So they would be able to give us all of this context so we could better understand how monumental this event was. On the day that it happened, or the day that we thought it was happening. More than the kids the year before had, because the kids the year before had really just been learning about very basic German culture, like the food that they ate and things like that. So their plan was to kind of recreate what had happened the year before, but do it better. And they pulled it off. It was a great success. Maybe some kids smarter than me knew what was going on. I had no idea. And it's an interesting tactic to create a situation like that for kids. Because, you know, you're essentially lying to them. But I have to say it was very effective. And I'm grateful that they decided to do that. It created a connection for me to this moment in history that I never would have had. And I asked my friend if his mom, you know, had any other information about it, and all she said was they considered sending like a permission slip or a note home to parents telling them what was going to happen, but they ended up not doing that. It had been pitched as this immersive learning experience, and everyone was behind it. The only other thing I can think to say about it is um thank you, Miss House. I had some additional editing help from Ben Lamb. The cover art is by Marcella Johnson. She also came up with the title of the podcast. Our theme music is by Mitchell Harditch. You can find us on Instagram, Facebook, and at Robtellstales.com. This podcast would have not been possible without Ben, Marcella, and Melanie. Thank you, and thanks for listening.